Learning to Live
by Max Alleyne
Summary: If she moved, she might shatter into a million tiny pieces that could never be put back together again. But he couldn’t stand to know that she was doing this, that she was shutting down. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. Morgan/Garcia


**A/N:** So, a little piece of Morgan/Garcia set after "100." Yeah, I know, it's been done a thousand times, but hopefully you'll enjoy it anyway. This is my first foray into Morgan/Garcia, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Please review! =)

_

* * *

_

No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness had always got there first, and was waiting for it. --Terry Pratchett

Even before he turned the lights on, he knew that her face was tearstained. He also knew that she was afraid that he would turn on the lights. If he turned on the lights, everything became real: Haley's death, Jack's growing up without a mother, Hotch's single fatherhood. If the lights came on, she would see a world where this was true, and existed as surely as evil and hatred existed. Maybe, she was thinking, if she kept them off, she could keep reality at bay. If she sat in the darkness, she didn't have to face—or accept—the harsh reality that she knew awaited her in the light.

But the problem with the dark was that she was afraid of that, too. She had worked as their technical analyst for years. She had seen much of what they saw, thought he tried to keep it from her whenever possible. She now knew all about the things that went bump in the night, and she was terrified of them. She had even faced her own, though it only served to hammer home the realization that it really could happen to her. She knew about the Tobias Hankels, the Benjamin Cyruses, the George Foyets of the world, making the dark especially scary.

"Hey, baby girl." His voice was quiet—he was sure of that—but he might as well have been yelling. It broke the silence. No, it tore away the silence. As soon as he spoke, he heard Garcia's gasps as she tried to catch her breath and stop crying. It was all he could do not to do the same thing, but he knew that he had to hold it together. If he didn't hold it together, how could he hold her together?

He gently lowered himself onto the sofa, feeling awkwardly to ensure that he didn't sit on her. He discovered that she was curled up in the fetal position in the corner of the couch, her head resting on the arm. Her feet were bare, the shoes having been discarded on the floor beside the door. Without any hesitation, he pulled her feet into his lap and began to gently massage them. She had needed one of those for days.

"I've needed one of those for days," she said finally, her voice quivering and timid. He smiled in the darkness and was glad that she couldn't see it. He knew that it wasn't the smile she was used to seeing. It wasn't a smile the reached all the way to his eyes and showed off those pearly whites. Instead, it was a humorless smile, the smile of someone laughing at himself for his iniquities. It was the smile of a man who hated being helpless, but had been unable to be anything else.

"I know. It's those high heels you've been wearing. It takes a toll on your feet."

"My feet are the least of my problems right now. God, Derek…Think of poor Hotch. And Jack…Oh God…" And then she was gone again, crying her heart out for that poor little boy who didn't have a mother anymore, and for Hotch—their usually unemotional leader—who had lost the love of his life. She knew how he felt. She had lost her parents, and she had thought she lost Derek. She remembered that feeling of overwhelming emptiness that had threatened to overwhelm her in those moments when she believed him dead. God, poor Hotch…

In the darkness, despite his best efforts, tears fell from Morgan's eyes. He knew what it was like to grow up without a family, to lost the ones you loved. And worse than that, he had almost lost Garcia. The memories of sitting at her bedside, berating himself for being in church instead of being with her, overwhelmed him. The ache in his chest grew sharper as he imagined the world for a moment without Garcia in it. No more of her breezing into the office in her brightly colored outfits. No more of her hysterical, yet highly inappropriate telephone greetings. No more of her—No. He forces himself to stop, because he isn't going to think of the world this way. The world was a dark enough place without imagining her gone.

"It'll get better," he whispered, squeezing her foot comfortingly. She fumbled in the dark as she reached for his hand, and upon finally finding it, held tight. It didn't matter that she was making him lose feeling in his fingers. It didn't matter that her feet were poking him in an incredibly uncomfortable way in the crotch. What mattered was the comfort.

"How can it?" she asked, though she knew the answer. She had been there, done that, and knew that things would get better. It just didn't feel like it right then.

"You know it can. It will never go away—" he started.

"But you learn to live with it," she finished.

"Something like that."

"What if I don't want to? How can I learn to live with a world where people butcher each other and get off on it? Why would we want to 'learn to live' with that, like it's okay, like its commonplace? I don't want to get used to a world where evil is acceptable—"

Her words were frantic and pouring out of her mouth in a torrent of emotion. They saw so much, so much that she didn't want to know, didn't want to see…

"Hold up there, darlin'. Evil is not acceptable. It never will be. What that son of a bitch did to Hayley, and to all those other people in Boston, will never be okay. And that's why we do what we do. We keep them from doing it again. We keep it from being acceptable. We catch them, and we put them away so that the rest of the world doesn't have to see what we see. We keep the rest of the world from learning to live with evil like that."

She nodded numbly, and lie still, not daring to move. If she moved, she might shatter into a million tiny pieces that could never be put back together again. Like Humpty Dumpty. But he couldn't stand to know that she was doing this, that she was shutting down. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to him, running his fingers through her tousled hair.

"I don't know how you manage to hold yourself together, and then me too," she whispered quietly. "You big macho man, you." It was an attempt at a small joke—a good sign—but it fell horribly flat.

Gently, he took her hand—the one that had been clutching his for dear life—and brought it to his cheek. She felt to wetness of the tears that he had shed for Hayley and for Hotch. But they were also tears for himself and for Garcia. They were tears for all the things he had seen, and for all the things that he would see when he went into work tomorrow and the day after, and the day after. They were tears for the fact that Garcia was devastated, and tears because he couldn't seem to end her pain.

"You're holding me together," he told her, his voice low and gentle. "I told you once that you were my God-given solace, and I wasn't lying. You're getting me through this."

"Don't let Tamar—"

"I don't want to talk about her," he said, and she understood. It was about solace, about taking the little comfort that they could in each other, because tomorrow they were going to get up and go do it again. Life would go on, whether they wanted it to or not. But at least they had each other.

"Can we go to bed now?" she asked. She almost sounded meek making the request. But it wasn't a fear of rejection that made her sound that way. It was because she was afraid—afraid that if they went to bed that something else might happen—that things would go from bad to worse.

"Yeah. Let's go to bed."

Hand in hand, they made their way to her bed and barely managed to get out of their clothes before collapsing. She slid under the covers, clad in only a t-shirt, he only in his boxers, but it didn't matter. She had been far more naked to him on the couch than she was right then. The mind was far more vulnerable than the body, and they both knew that.

She rested her head on his chest as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him. She felt safe in his arms, safe enough to let her eyes fall shut for the first time since Hayley's death. He pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead, then each eyelid and each cheek. It was a lover's embrace, they both knew that, but weren't going to deal with it right then. That was for later, after they were both healed. Until, they would learn to live with it.

_"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." --Charles Austin Brackett_


End file.
